Tim Parks on translation

       Good to see Tim Parks continue to muse on translation at the New York Review blog -- now on Listening for the Jabberwock.
       Here he suggests:

Translated texts, then, and there are ever more of them in the world today, tend to be cooler, a little less fluid -- they will operate more on the rational intellect than on the rhythm-wired senses. They will deceive you less and charm you less.

       Among the interesting questions he raises -- and will, I hope address at greater length in the future -- is:

I have often wondered if that is now why, in certain countries, translations even seem to be preferred to native texts.

       And he mentions a 'large study' that:

suggests that while the national language in Italy is changing fast, with Italian novelists ever more open to stylistic influence from the cinema or from abroad, translations keep alive a hypercorrect literary Italian that has otherwise lapsed into disuse.

       I'd love to hear more about that.